2010
Akbar Ganji, Iranian writer and journalist

Akbar Ganji is an Iranian writer and journalist who spent 6 years in a Tehran prison for advocating a secular democracy and exposing government involvement in the assassination of individuals who opposed Iran's theocratic regime.

2008
Yon Goicoechea, leader of the pro-democracy student-led movement in Venezuela

Yon Goicoechea Lara is a pivotal force behind Venezuela's non-violent pro-democracy Student Movement. The 23-year-old Venezuelan law student is a passionate opponent of the erosion of human and civil rights under the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and an organizer of massive student marches that have captured the world's attention.

2006
Mart Laar, former prime minister of Estonia

In only two years in office, he negotiated the withdrawal of Russian troops from Estonian soil and introduced the kroon, one of Eastern Europe's most stable currencies. He also instituted a flat tax rate, a move which has been widely copied—even in Russia. Under Laar, Estonia removed price controls, discounted useless regulations, and saw the largest real per capita income of any of the former Communist states.

2004
Hernando de Soto, Peruvian economist

Beginning in his native Peru, de Soto has focused on a revolutionary concept that is having repercussions throughout the world's poor countries: the lack of formal property rights as the source of poverty in poor countries. His decades of pioneering work, for presidents and in the streets on behalf of property rights for the poor, have led to global acclaim.

2002
Peter Bauer, the late British economist

At the beginning of the 21st century, the most heartening trend in the world economy is the collapse of central planning and the global spread of markets. This has had profound implications both for prosperity and for the entrenchment of constitutional government. Peter Bauer, now Professor Emeritus of Economics at the London School of Economics, both heralded and aided those triumphs, and his work has been vindicated by them.